Prioritize before you begin

As a leader, do you prioritize your work before jumping into it?

Launching a project before you have a good sense of all its components will likely slow down your work and its successful completion. Make sure you get your priorities right - including input from colleagues - before setting your project in motion:

• Clarify the assignment. Don't start until stakeholders and colleagues agree on the goals and the general timetable.
• Organize your staff. Get team members involved at the get-go so they feel ownership. Agree on a way of working – how often you'll meet, how you'll communicate, etc.
• Create a project plan. Ask your team to help you identify project activities and how long they will take. Put them in sequence and identify which are interdependent and which can run at the same time.
• Determine check-in points. Set some specific dates to do check-ins on progress.  Catching gaps and mistakes early can them corrected quickly.

Adapted from Guide to Project Management from Harvard Business Review

Delegating Tasks to Build Staff Capacity

As a leader, do you delegate tasks to staff in the hope to build their capacity?

In a desire to share / distribute leadership, have you ever delegated a task to a staff member,....and somehow it ended up back on your plate?  Beware of this "reverse delegation."  Staff members who are unsure how to do something may enlist you in doing it for them.  Don't automatically solve problems or make decisions for hesitant colleagues.  Focus on generating alternative solutions together, making sure your colleague maintains responsibility for carrying through with the task.  Don't fall for it when others make statements like, "You'll do a better job with this."  While flattering, and possibly even true, they are often a way to get you involved when you needn't be....and how do you build capacity among your staff...if people feel they can - or should - default to you?

Support your staff members with tasks that 'stretch' them.  Many will discover that they have much more capacity than they realized.  They'll discover that their talents are greater than they realized.  But just in case.....don't be too far away.  They may need some coaching or mentoring along the way.  They'll feel reassured and more willing to take on challenges in the future if they know that you believe they can do it AND you're close by 'just in case'. 

Adaped from: Guide to Project Management (Harvard Business Review)

Leading Meetings

As a leader, how do you lead open, honest, productive meetings?

Meetings without outcomes are a waste of time. Yet, many meetings fail to produce results because the conversation circles around the issues rather than focusing on them. To make sure decisions happen and people take action, you need to have a productive dialogue. Here are five things every meeting
should be:

1. Open. The outcomes of your meeting should not be predetermined. Questions like, "What are we missing?", "Who else needs to be here?", "What voices are not represented at this table?" signal honest searching for a range of perspectives and more broad-based thinking.
2. Candid. Encourage people to air conflicts. When people express their real opinions, productivity increases.  A quick 'go round' of the table to ask "What;s working for you and what isn't?" can help surface issues that need to be tabled. 
3. Informal. Keep it loose. Conversations should be unscripted with honest questions and spontaneity...yet with meeting processes in place so that it's not unending.  This in itself takes lots of practice as the leader of meetings.
4. Conclusive. Everyone should leave knowing exactly what they are expected to do.  A quick check-in helps.  Again, a quick 'go round' of the table to ask, "What's your action coming out of our meeting?" helps solidify the actions and confirms that the meeting had purpose. 
5. Reflective - a few days after the meeting, check in with a few people to ask how it went.  Are meetings helping us accomplish what we want to accomplish?  Being sincere in seeking this input helps staff know that you're serious about their opinions and that you value both their opinions and their work.  

Adapted from Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions.

Don't Push Out the Troublemakers

When you are leading, do you try to get rid of 'the troublemakers'?  If so, that may be a mistake. 

"Don’t push out the troublemakers; let them in and treat them with respect. As he (John Kotter)

puts it, “invite in the lions.” Embrace them and welcome them into the debate. Using

this strategy disarms and co-opts them, and also creates some drama and focuses other

people’s attention on your proposal, which can be helpful when everyone is

on information overload."

From: Jeff Kehoe, "How to Save Good Ideas: An Interview with John Kotter". 

Published by: Harvard Business Review 88, no. 10 (October 2010): 129-132.  Found in: Phi Delta Kappan, December 2010